- [Dr. Patrick]: And just to add on as a comment, you know, speaking to prevention. I know there's
been...there's... Some of the preclinical evidence that really excited me was there was a rat study.
And I forget the group that published the study. But the rats were given sulforaphane,
they were given it before they were given a chemical that causes bladder cancer.
And the other group of rats were just given the chemical that causes bladder cancer.
And the rats that were given the dose of the sulforaphane did not develop bladder cancer.
And if they did, the tumors were much, much smaller in size. So again,
preventative. You know, just more evidence that the preventative approach seems to be stronger.
There's also been the clinical evidence. It seems as though... And your...and you know better about
this, Jed, about, you know, the tissues that sulforaphane may accumulate in more, you know, the
bladder, prostate, breast, versus other tissues, or lungs. You know, I don't even know if we know
all the differences. But the prostate seems to be one that at least clinically there's been
a few studies showing that sulforaphane, ranging in dose, the higher the dose the more robust the
effect. So 60 milligrams of sulforaphane a day was shown to slow the biomarker prostate-specific
antigen, or PSA, which people with, you know, early prostate cancer or, you know, a
risk of it or whatever have. And so slowing that by 86% is certainly, you know, a good thing.
- [Dr. Fahey]: Yeah. So as a follow-up, shame on you, I think that first bladder
cancer study you were talking about is also one that I was involved in.
- [Dr. Patrick]: Okay, so at the beginning of the call I said I'd been following your work because
you're every study. So pretty much every study that I cite almost Jed Fahey, Dr. Jed Fahey,
is an author on. So it's just you're so prolific, I can't keep track of all your publications, Jed.
- [Dr. Fahey]: Mostly a minor player. So in this case
a minor player. A group in New Zealand, Rex Munday and an old, old colleague,
actually the guy who, with Paul Talalay, put sulforaphane on the map, Yingsha Zhang,
and I did this...did one of the rat studies, I think maybe the one you're talking about,
with bladder cancer. And absolutely, this was benzyl isothiocyanate, as I recall,
that we used, or sinigrin, allyl isothiocyanate. Which come from radish or daikon mustard seed.
So it's worth dwelling on this. When you think about what happens with sulforaphane,
which most of you...I don't know, most of you don't. I do probably too much, to my detriment.
But what happens? You ingest it. You take it in, the body sees it, your cells of your body see it,
they actually take it in very rapidly, they conjugate it with glutathione, and they spit it
back out. Then where does it go? It goes from the blood to the urine. Then where does the urine go?
Unless you're on a Foley catheter, and most of us that are reasonable healthy aren't,
although I've had that fun experience before. So your bladder stores urine up. What's in that
urine? Sulforaphane and its conjugates. Well, what is bladder cancer? Bladder cancer is the
epithelial cells of the bladder, most of them, the tissue lining that bladder,
you know, a mutation forming and ultimately a tumor developing.
So bladder cancer, I still think, is the ultimate target for isothiocyanates because
you're bathing that tissue in these protective compounds, essentially all the time. You know,
you empty your bladder and immediately it starts filling back up again.
Certainly the prostate cancer is another example where mechanistically, or I should say
"evidentiarily," we have...there's evidence.
The cause and effect is a little harder to see, but the bladder cancer model is just beautiful.